A University of South Florida professor has spent the past 16 days in a structure 22 feet beneath the sea, and he intends to stay for a total of 100 days.
Joe Dituri, an associate professor at the University of South Florida, is staying in the Jules Undersea Lodge, which is located 22 feet below the surface in a Key Largo lagoon.
Dituri plans to stay for 100 days in order to break the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous time spent in an underwater habitat. Bruce Cantrell and Jessica Fain set the current record of 73 days in 2014 at the Jules Undersea Lodge.
Dituri stated that his project was inspired by director James Cameron, who asked him to evaluate one of his submersibles in 2012.
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The professor hopes that his experience, dubbed Project Neptune, will help him make new discoveries, such as studying the project’s effect on his own body.
Dituri, who is chronicling his project on social media, said he will not be alone for the entire duration of the project, as student divers will be making occasional visits to the Jules Undersea Lodge.
Dituri said: ‘I designed this study on the traumatic brain injury healing power of pressure. The air pressure down here is exactly the pressure I treat patients on the surface. We know it increases stem cells. At the depth I’m at, you get at least twice the number of circulating stem cells if you only do it for five days.’
